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.......One of the winners very generously gave up his prize of a signed t-shirt, offering instead to auction it in aid of one of Marillion’s favoured charities (‘Victims of Prog Rock’). Suffice to say, he received a warm round of applause (mind you, I’m not sure I’d want to wear a t-shirt that someone had scribbled all over either…). I can’t remember what the t-shirt eventually went for, but it was in the region of 650 euros.

Mid-auction, the band’s keyboard player put an impromptu shout out to one “Phil Harrison”. Turns out that this was the Phil Harrison you and I know as the president of Sony Computer Entertainment’s Worldwide Studios. I’d heard rumours that he’s a friend of the band, and something of a fan of their music, but I hadn’t realised he was at the convention.

Rather than bid, Harrison offered to auction a brand new PS3, paid for from his “own pocket”. The band’s keyboard player duly started the bidding at around 100 euros, getting a couple of incremental increases from interested – but slightly bemused – fans.

However, before you could say “Fake blog fiasco”, Harrison materialised on stage to commandeer both the auction, and the microphone. Realising that this was another solid gold opportunity to promote his floundering device, he blurted out the launch date, probably mumbled something about “a new dawn of interactive entertainment”, and inexplicably re-booted the auction with a fresh starting price of 600 euros...........